Defendant Handled Military Transporter and Machinegun Nest, Says Witness
This post is also available in: Bosnian
Vitomir Rackovic, a former member of the Army of Republika Srpska, is charged with participating in attacks on the Bosniak villages of Crni Vrh, Osojnica, Kabernik, and Holijaci from May-August 1992. The indictment also accuses Rackovic of detention, torture, enforced disappearances, and rape.
The witness, Nesib Nuhanovic, said he saw Rackovic in the village of Hamzici in Visegrad in the spring of 1992, while Uzicki Corps from the Yugoslav Army were stationed there. He said that Rackovic had ordered residents to surrender their weapons and not leave their homes.
“I knew him. We used to work together at “Granit” (a local business) in Visegrad. He asked us to hand our weapons over. He ordered us not to leave our houses. He wasn’t alone. He didn’t see me, because I was hiding,” Nuhanovic said. Rackovic was wearing a gray and green uniform, he added.
Nuhanovic said he saw Rackovic’s house from an observation post later on. He saw Rackovic exiting a military transporter and going to a machinegun nest at his home. He said that the transporter didn’t have a crew and that he only saw Rackovic.
“When he wasn’t in the transporter, he handled the machinegun,” Nuhanovic said.
Nuhanovic said that as member of the Territorial Defense, he transported civilians from surrounding villages to Medjidje, located between Visegrad and Gorazde.
He said his sister Semsija was killed when they came across a Serb ambush.
“Adem Berberovic told me that she was hit in the back and that she begged the Serbs to give her water, but they kicked her until she died,” Nuhanovic said.
Testifying at the same hearing, psychiatrist Alma Dzubur Kulenovc confirmed that a protected witness known as RV-5 visited her twice in 2013.
“She was subjected to mental, physical, and sexual abuse,” Dzubur Kulenovic said. She said that the Association of Women Victims of War had requested RV-5’s medical examination.
After having reviewed RV-5’s case history, Dzubur Kulenovic determined that she had suffered acute mental trauma followed by post traumatic stress and a chronic sleeping disorder. She said that adequate therapy had been prescribed to her.
The defense objected to Dzubur Kulenovic’s testimony, on the grounds that it was unclear whether she was testifying as a witness or a court expert.
The trial will continue on February 25.
